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Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has political power, taxpayer-funded polling and a bagful of emotion-triggering phrases — abuse of Canadian taxpayers, bogus refugees, gold-plated benefits — on his side.

Canada’s doctors have passion, medical ethics and a grassroots network of nurses, midwives, therapists, church leaders, social activists and health experts on their side.

According to Dr. Meb Rashid, medical director of the Crossroads Clinic for refugees at Women’s College Hospital, Kenney is putting lives at risk.

Rashid, a family physician, is one of the founders of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, which has vowed to track and report cases of death or serious harm resulting from Kenney’s $20-million-a-year cutback.

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It took effect a month ago. But reports already are coming in: a 7-year-old epileptic boy in Hamilton was hospitalized for a severe seizure because he could not get medicine; a woman who had endured multiple rapes after she was sold into the sex trade couldn’t get an ultrasound for the fetus she was carrying; a Colombian man is desperately fundraising to pay Toronto General Hospital for life-saving abdominal surgery; two refugee claimants in Ottawa — one Peruvian, the other El Salvadoran — have stopped taking their post-traumatic stress medications.

By fall, the doctors hope to have a compendium of cases from across the country. A local delegation of medical workers will show up every time a cabinet minister makes an announcement, the government calls a news conference or Parliament holds public hearings to highlight specific cases. “None of us wants to disrupt meetings, but we really feel we have no choice,” said Tim O’Shea of McMaster University, who works as a medical consultant at the Shelter Health Network in Hamilton.

Since April, the doctors have been asking Kenney for a meeting on this issue. So far he has refused.

He has refused to discuss the costs and benefits of his scheme, taking into account the increased burden on the provincial budgets.

He has refused to acknowledge he is depriving vulnerable people of access to health-care, insisting refugees will not be turned away from hospitals or clinics. All they will lose, he says, is “gold-plated” extras — drugs, dental care, wheelchairs, X-rays, eyeglasses and ultrasound tests.

And he has refused to discuss the medical impact of his decision, maintaining it is merely a matter of equity between hard-working Canadian taxpayers and migrants who abuse the country’s generosity.

This showdown will escalate in the coming months if Kenney digs in his heels, ignoring the doctors’ objections. It will recede if he finds a way to compromise.

At the moment, the minister appears to be leaning toward option one. Convinced he is on the winning side of this issue, he is circulating an online petition that reads: “We, the undersigned, thank Jason Kenney for his efforts to streamline benefits afforded to refugee claimants under the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) and bring them in line with the benefits received by taxpaying Canadians, including new Canadians.”

Behind the scenes, however, option two is being tested.

Rashid is talking to Dr. Danielle Grondin, director general of health for the immigration department, about the implementation of the directive. Some doctors find the new rules so confusing they’ve stopped treating all refugees. Others resent being forced to grill patients on their refugee status. Solving these problems would at least limit the damage.

Quiet overtures are also being made to officials in the health and human resources departments and to doctors and nurses in Parliament.

Kenney’s record provides some grounds for hope. For all his bluster, he does bend on occasion. He amended the most punitive provisions of Bill C-31, his sweeping immigration overhaul, last spring. And he quietly exempted government-sponsored refugees from his current initiative last month.

What will probably tip the balance is public opinion. If Canadians — not just those who sign laughable petitions — support Kenney’s crackdown or don’t care, he is likely to barge ahead. If enough dissenting voices are raised, there is reasonable chance he’ll meet the doctors halfway.

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